Technology Reseller v20 2019

01732 759725 telecoms 44 Goodenough added: “Our emphasis on automated proactive support frees up our support guys to help our clients get the most out of Cloudbox software, from the latest Teams feature, which helps colleagues and external parties work together, to reminders on how to create an Excel graph. It’s little wonder that 86% of Cloudbox customers would recommend them, an enviable rate in the field of IT.” In addition to its core product, Cloudbox provides a range of supplementary services including on-site infrastructure, Microsoft Azure hosting and low-cost IP Telephony. Channel opportunity Cloudbox is a useful portfolio extension for channel partners that don’t have the desire or the means to provide their own MSP solution, such as: n Smaller IT companies that might want to focus on on-site customer service/ projects/training etc. and outsource behind the scenes work to a company that make everything work securely and reliably for a fixed monthly cost; n Telecoms companies that require an IT solution to lock out competitors offering both telecoms and IT managed services; and n Channel partners that want to offer a comprehensive IT managed solution without investing in their own staff, solutions or systems. www.cloudboxtech.com 020-3761 8080 IT managed services provider Cloudbox has launched an all-in-one, IT in a box solution for SMEs that includes the IT, security and support needed by a normal business for £49 per user per month. Nick Goodenough, Cloudbox UK CEO, said: “Cloudbox incorporates email, 10 years of email archiving, sophisticated file sharing, full backup, antivirus and full endpoint security, even Office 365 into one simple package, taking the complexity out of IT.” IT resources and applications sourced from best-of-breed vendors are managed offsite in the cloud, so customers don’t have costly onsite servers to maintain; with no unexpected costs, budgets can be projected more accurately; and with only one set of licences to manage, customers have the flexibility to scale up or down as they require. Goodenough added: “The solution balances compliance and control with usability and functionality and ensures that your software is standardised throughout your company, with no licensing or other costs to consider.” Cloudbox provides truly unlimited IT support for all devices (desktop, laptop, tablets and mobiles), including change requests and new device configurations. Goodenough says small businesses especially struggle with budgeting for IT services, pointing out that Cloudbox’s unlimited support contract will protect them from unexpected costs, delays and disappointment. “Cloudbox unlimited support gives responsible small business owners complete control over their IT spend on a month-to-month basis so they know exactly what their costs are as they grow,” he said. He believes the practice of charging separately for IT support leads to problems and is a legacy of the old break-fix model. “Properly specified and managed IT should not go wrong. We invest heavily in automated scheduled maintenance, security management (including patching) and constant monitoring to help ensure that our clients do not suffer IT downtime,” he said. Cloudbox: IT in a box for SMEs New all-in-one solution for SMEs also a flexible range extension for channel partners Nick Goodenough are extending our portfolio in the product supply area, bringing a subscription- based service to partners where they can leverage our scale and buying power to get product from a range of distributors in a fully automated way. On top of that, we are working actively on a couple of big partnerships in the cloud space to bring cloud services to the market. I can’t say more than that at the moment,” said O’Brien. Constant modernisation Chief Digital Officer Nathan Marke points out that this kind of product expansion is nothing new for the company. “What these three businesses have separately done very well is constantly modernise their portfolios as technology changes. Bringing them together, I think, will give us great focus and great agility and enable us to execute much better, without any distraction, 100% focused on how a partner consumes products and makes money out of them,” he said. “We aim to be a super-aggregator so our partners can come to one place, with one contract and get a really simple experience through our portals, our APIs and our fantastic support. Our Net Promoter Score is a positive 50 – it’s outstanding. What we are trying to do with our broader portfolio is make it easy for partners to offer more to their customers, because that is what their customers are demanding. “Over the next five years, the overall ICT market is expected to grow by around 3%, but none of that growth is happening in the large enterprise or Government departments; it’s all happening in SOHO, SME and start-ups, where we are seeing 5%, 6%, 7% growth. SMEs are clearly very hungry for technology that allows them to grow fast, to compete, to look like big companies, but unlike larger businesses they don’t have lots of people on hand to run IT for them and so rely heavily on partners. Because they don’t have the time to manage lots of partnerships, we are seeing a massive trend for consolidation. Today, a small business doesn’t need more than 2 or 3 close and trusted partners to deliver the whole of their IT capability.” O’Neil added: “The major networks and carriers are unable to support small businesses in this converging world of digital anywhere near as well as the channel community. The channel is just brilliant at it. There is a huge opportunity for them to win and to win big because the majors can’t do it.” www.digitalwholesalesolutions.com ...continued